


It’d Be Worse If She Were Making Tacky Hipster Tables out of Them

by FrenchTwistResistance



Series: I’ve Always Been Crazy But It’s Kept Me from Going Insane [1]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, I just want caos to be a sitcom where hot middle-aged ladies kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:01:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22123774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: “Now that you’ve hurt my feelings twice in a row, you’re obligated to say yes,” Miss Wardwell says, even sweeter somehow, just dripping with fake weird intimacy and seduction.Hilda and Mary have interacted a number of times, but a small number, mostly punctuated by supernatural strangeness and Hilda’s subtly shoving her out of pettiness and opportunity to assert her dominance and bizarre conversations. Bizarre not unlike this except with more talk about Sabrina. And that thought perks Hilda up a bit.“That’s not really how hurt feelings and obligations work. But if this is about Sabrina—”“Oh no no. I’m assuming she’s doing something very stupid on her own with her own friends. I need a friend to do something stupid with.”
Relationships: Hilda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Series: I’ve Always Been Crazy But It’s Kept Me from Going Insane [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597594
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	It’d Be Worse If She Were Making Tacky Hipster Tables out of Them

Hilda thinks about letting the call go to the answering machine. She’s got way too much focaccia dough on her hands to get off adequately in time to pick up a receiver. It might be important, though. Zelda’s out, Sabrina’s out. Maybe someone’s mangled on the side of the road. She finally just does it—she wiggles her nose, and the receiver floats over, curly cord stretched to the brink. She lets it float near enough to hear so she doesn’t have to get a crick in her neck over it.

“Spellman Mortuary,” Hilda says.

“I could use an extra set of hands this afternoon,” a woman’s sultry voice says.

“Excuse me? Who is this?”

“Why, Miss Spellman. I’m offended you don’t recognize your niece’s favorite teacher.”

“Sabrina’s had many favorite teachers over the years,” Hilda says, now recognizing that oleaginous voice, rolling her eyes.

“Well then I’m offended you don’t recognize your favorite of Sabrina’s teachers,” Miss Wardwell says, overly sweet.

“Pish posh. I’d’ve recognized Miss Kingston anywhere. She has the most beautiful southern accent.” And the most beautiful shoulders and triceps which she shows off in tasteful sleeveless blouses pretty often, Hilda adds mentally.

“Now that you’ve hurt my feelings twice in a row, you’re obligated to say yes,” Miss Wardwell says, even sweeter somehow, just dripping with fake weird intimacy and seduction.

Hilda and Mary have interacted a number of times, but a small number, mostly punctuated by supernatural strangeness and Hilda’s subtly shoving her out of pettiness and opportunity to assert her dominance and bizarre conversations. Bizarre not unlike this except with more talk about Sabrina. And that thought perks Hilda up a bit.

“That’s not really how hurt feelings and obligations work. But if this is about Sabrina—”

“Oh no no. I’m assuming she’s doing something very stupid on her own with her own friends. I need a friend to do something stupid with.” She laughs lightly, and Hilda gets goosebumps on her neck as if Mary had just breathed that twinkle of a laugh right into her ear.

“And what makes you think we’re friends? Or that I do stupid things?” Mary hums into the phone and then says,

“Like I said: I need an extra set of hands. And I’ve noticed that your particular set seems quite handy.”

Hilda opens her mouth, shuts it, considers her options for responses in relation to how she should take that comment. Everything that comes out of that egregiously sexy woman’s red red mouth sounds like flirtation, so she’s not sure if this is or isn’t and whether she wants it to be or whether she wants to engage in that dangerous game. The game itself might not be so dangerous. But the consequences. “What’d you do this afternoon, sister?” “Oh nothin’ much, Zelds, just did something stupid with Miss Wardwell and then fucked her.” Yikes. Not a conversation she wants to have. Not while they’re all so on edge about everything going on with Sabrina. Or ever, really. Zelda’s palpable disdain for Wardwell, Wardwell’s ever-changing backstory, Wardwell’s almost voyeuristic intrusion into all their lives. No it’s best to pretend that had been just a pun instead of a come-on, regardless of how leeringly it had been said.

But she’s been analyzing too long, and Miss Wardwell continues:

“And I bet that handy set of hands knows its way around a stick, too.”

Hilda coughs and her magic falters and the phone falls out of the air. She scrambles to catch it with her handy focaccia hands and presses the receiver to her ear a little more forcefully than she’d meant to.

“Excuse me, what?”

“Forgive me my presumption. But. You do know how to drive a manual transmission, don’t you?”

“Um well yes.”

“Fabulous, darling. I’ll pick you up in half an hour. Oh. And you may want to wear those cute little overalls of yours. And bring your work gloves.” 

Hilda starts to protest, ask clarifying questions, but she’s talking to a dead line.

She barely has time to change after she’s finished scraping dough off the phone and throwing the remainder in a bowl with Saran Wrap on top and yelling up to Ambrose to finish it for her please. He’s honestly better with flatbreads than she is anyway.

She gets out to the porch so she won’t have to endure trying to be a hostess to this woman just in time. In barrels a rusted old F-150 with a lift kit and frog lights, a gun rack. The whole bit, including nude lady silhouettes on the mudflaps and a “No Fat Chicks” bumper sticker. Mary is hanging out the rolled down window in a camo baseball cap and a thin white t-shirt showing a bright pink brassiere underneath.

“Very nice,” Hilda says, loud over the non-mufflered rumble. “Where’s the rebel flag? Or the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ snake?”

“Oh I assure you. They’re not missing. They are tattooed onto the person I… borrowed this from.”

Mary scoots over in the ratty bench seat, beckons Hilda with two fingers.

Hilda takes a breath.

And then against all better judgment, Hilda hops in.

“Well, where to, Miss Wardwell? Are we going noodlin’?”

“Amusing.” She says it flatly, but her head is cocked to one side, and her eyes are penetrating and sparkling, and her mouth is smiling. “No, Miss Spellman. Although I have always wanted to try that.”

“Well, it’s illegal,” Hilda says as tartly as she can manage, annoyance and curiosity growing in equal measure.

“Hmm. It’s not in Georgia. That’s where Miss Kingston is from, you know. Perhaps we could all go on a road trip, and she could show us the most… sensitive spots.” She says all this languidly and then traces her top teeth with her tongue. Hilda in turn traces the tongue’s movement with her eyes and then blinks herself out of the temporary trance, says,

“I doubt she’s the type for that.”

“I don’t know. She has the best arms in town. Noodlin’ takes a lot of upper body strength. And quick fingers besides.” Hilda clears her throat, says,

“Where are we going, then?”

“Finally. I thought you were going to flirt with me all afternoon and we’d lose all our daylight.”

Hilda harrumphs and adjusts the seat with a dramatic lurch. She slams the clutch and guns it into reverse, a quick, sharp brake, and then into first.

“Hell’s legion, I knew you’d be talented at this,” Wardwell groans with her head thrown back. It’s an erotic picture, and Hilda takes the corner out of the drive a little too fast and changes gears as she straightens the wheel. “North side of town, near the railroad tracks,” Wardwell continues, and then she looks at Hilda, eyes wild. “Drive as recklessly as you’d like. It’s a shitty truck with a shitty owner. They both deserve the punishment.”

Hilda loses a little of their daylight taking the roundabout back way so she can drive as recklessly as Wardwell had egged her on to drive. The radio blasts a Waylon Jennings tape over the sounds of half-bald tires spitting gravel and 5.0 liter v-8 straining at Hilda’s insistent gas pedal. It’s only when she finds herself with an elbow propped at the open window singing along to “Ramblin’ Man” that she realizes how much she’s missed this—driving crazy in a shitty old truck, listening to crazy old country, feeling the wind in her hair, having a woman who wants her looking at her intermittently from a crumbling passenger seat. Being free and ridiculous and comfortable and fast and loose. 

“‘You'd better move away. You're standin' too close to the flame,’” Hilda sings, perfectly in tune an octave above Waylon’s baritone. Mary laughs and grabs Hilda’s hand, squeezes.

“Can you go any faster?” Mary says, eyes so bright and glistening and weird. 

And Hilda punches it. They both giggle as their stomachs flip upon a descent down a hill.

Mary turns down “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line” as Hilda reluctantly pulls to a stop at the four-way at the north edge of town.

“Ok,” Mary says. Their hands are still joined. Mary disengages, pats Hilda’s hand once in her retreat. “Slowly now.” 

Wardwell bends at the waist and rummages under the bench seat. When she re-emerges, she’s holding what looks like a small square leather handbag with a long strap. But she pulls a pair of binoculars out of it and begins scanning.

“Slower!” she hisses, and Hilda obeys. “Left.” And Hilda obeys. Barely twenty miles per hour and still Mary whispers, “Slower!” Fifteen miles per hour out of the industrial district to a row of self-storage units on Mary’s side and mobile homes on Hilda’s side. “Pull over.” Hilda does so.

Mary tosses the binoculars onto the bench seat and opens the door. She’s sliding into well-worn deerskin gloves even as she’s sliding out of the truck. Three swift strides and then she’s too focused to even orient her head over her shoulder to loud whisper,

“Get to getting, babe!”

Hilda jumps out and puts on her own well-worn deerskin gloves as she follows Mary halfway across a deserted parking lot.

Mary’s squatting, taut muscular thighs working enticingly beneath the feeble black fabric of her leggings.

Hilda squats, too, and they lift the pallet together and carry it to the truck bed, hoist it inside.

They continue this dance. Hilda drives as Mary spies. And as the sky pinks and purples, they’ve got a bedful of stolen pallets.

Mary checks her watch and changes out the cassette. The Judds now. “Girls Night Out” as Mary directs Hilda to a shady little storefront just north of downtown. A couple of rough-looking men, a forklift. And the bed is empty while Mary’s hands are full of cash.

Mary presses some bills into Hilda’s palm, says,

“I’ve enjoyed your company today. You were as useful as I’d thought you’d be. And a better singer than I’d imagined.” There are many possible responses to what that statement might have been.

Hilda feels the bills in her hand, feels Mary’s weird expectant eyes on her.

“Country cruising is always better in the moonlight,” Hilda feels herself saying.

“I’d love for you to prove that,” Mary says.

Second, third. Fourth. Gravel and dirt. The engine’s roaring. And Mary’s hand is gripping Hilda’s. They shift together into fifth.

“Careful of deer, dear,” Mary says. It’s her regular low breathy seductiveness but also some concern there, too.

Hilda downshifts and downshifts and skids into a parking spot at the lake.

“Noodlin’?” Mary says. 

And this time it’s Hilda’s turn to laugh.

She opens the door, gets out so casually.

She’s in the pick-up bed, tapping on the rear window. Mary sees her. And she beckons with two fingers.

When Mary has joined her, she points to the clear black sky:

“There’s the North Star. In case you ever need it to navigate.”

“I don’t see why I’d ever need arbitrary helium when I have you.” Mary says. “Not only are you bright but you are also illuminating.”

Wardwell’s eyes are shining like a cat’s. There’s something behind them that is not human. But Hilda is as reckless with her heart as she is with her driving.

They kiss, and it’s all sparks and rocks shooting under too-fast tires.

“I know you’d rather fuck me than make love to me. And I’d rather that, too,” Mary says against Hilda’s mouth.


End file.
